An Exploratory Study to Assess the Aggression and Loneliness amongst College Going Indian Youth

The present study aims to assess aggression and loneliness amongst college going Indian youth. An ex-post facto design was employed. Data was collected from first year undergraduate college going students n=103) which included both males (n1=42) and females (n2=61) from various regions of India. The participants’ responses were recorded on two scales, Novaco Anger Scale and Provocation Inventory (Novaco, 2003) for assessing the cognitive, behavioral, physiological, regulatory aspects of aggression and situation-specific anger intensity, and Revised UCLA (Russel, Peplau and Cutrona,1980) for estimating the level of loneliness using google forms. A correlational method was used to compute the degree and direction of relationship between the two variables of aggression and loneliness. A moderate, significant and inverse relationship was obtained for loneliness with anger, anger regulation and provocation for females. While, for males a moderate, significant and inverse relationship was estimated for loneliness with anger and provocation. A test for significance (t-test) was employed to assess the significance of the means obtained for females and males. The results obtained indicated a significant gender difference on the dimension of anger regulation. The results obtained also showed a significant difference in anger intensity on provocation for females and males. Substantiating the obtained results with researches, it was inferred that difference may be attributed to gender role orientation and prevailing culture-specific norms. The present study has numerous limitations such as lack of generalizability due to limited representativeness and small sample size. Future implications of the study may include initiating aggression management interventions for the participants who have scored high on aggression.